Monday, March 20, 2017

Don't Go On a Diet!

Now that you have made a decision to lose weight, I have one major piece of advice for you. Don't go on a diet!

As a man, your primary goal is becoming stronger. This may entail weight loss, depending on your starting point and how you proceed, but only a woman really benefits from "losing weight." You can see this all around you: women who have a certain underlying beauty that is marred very simply by their obesity. Subtract the weight and you have a beautiful woman again.

But you are a man and, hopefully, you are not looking for physical beauty. Instead, you should want to become physically and mentally stronger and tougher. This is not achieved through weight loss.

Instead, you are going to begin training your body for war. Take a look at how soldiers train and eat to
get and idea of what you want to do.

Easy Choices
While we warn you to avoid diets, it is still important to discuss diet - by which I mean the food that you eat. The knight do not recommend as specific formula for eating. However, there are some ways for you to make easy choices about food that will have a beneficial impact on your health.

In my own case, I made a decision some years back to drop soda entirely from my diet. I had not been a major soda drinker but I had seen in my work with patients in a rehab hospital how many of the had brought on their problems through a lot of bad diet choices in life, soda being a significant factor in many cases.

I dropped soda entirely for about six months, without making any other real changes to my routine. Eventually, what I saw in my work would cause me to start exercising and making more significant changes ot how I ate but, for the time being, I was just duping soda.

I lost about ten pounds in a matter of a few weeks. The weight loss basically stopped there and has since turned around (that's another article), but it was evidence enough for me to recommend it. When you subtract that input of pure, liquid sugar into your system, it has an instant impact on weight.

These days, I occasionally quaff a can of Coke, but I still don't keep it around and drink it as if it were a rare glass of wine at a celebration.

Anyway, there are any ways that you can make similar choices to kickstart your conversion to knighthood. Maybe you will stop eating potato chips (a really good idea) or candy bars. Either way, this is a good way to make the first break from a world that is eating itself to death - a death both physical and spiritual.

If You Insist on Dieting
Some people do not want the burden of coming up with their own system. We get this and respect it. People join monasteries and brotherhoods (like this one!) because they want some guidance.

So if you must adhere to a specific diet, we recommend something along the lines of Paleo or Atkins. The reason for this recommendation is the emphasis on protein. You are going to need it to build muscle after lifting weights and doing sprints (more on that on the exercise page: Preparing the Body).

Foods That You Must Plan to Drop at Some Point

However you approach this issue, there are some things that you absolutely must stop eating at some point in your journey to full knighthood. These include candy, cupcakes and al that trash they sell in the grocery store isle and in gas stations. There are exceptions and we will get into this later. In the meantime, start dropping whatever you can manage from your diet. Your oppressors are using that crap to keep you complacent.

Remember: Get Angry.

Foods to Seek and Eat with No Shame

Having dictated all those food choices, it is time to let you know that there is plenty of food which you can eat with no shame and, indeed, should seek out. These include beef, poultry, pork, fish, nuts, cheese, whole milk, cottage cheese, raw fruits and more.

There is little more depressing for a man than to hear how he has to tailor his diet and reduce himself to eating a lot of shade-grown, hippie crap. The knights don't do that.